Businesses and traders have to file detailed returns for their transactions in three forms—GST returns 1, 2 and 3—relating to supplies made, purchases made and a comprehensive one.

The industry has been demanding an extension of the date of filing final GST returns in view of scores of invoices to be uploaded.(AFP File Photo)

A panel of the goods and services tax (GST) council, which is authorized to take emergency decisions, on Monday decided to extend the deadline for filing detailed indirect tax returns for July, giving taxpayers extra time for compliance.

Businesses and traders have to file detailed returns for their transactions in three forms—GST returns 1, 2 and 3—relating to supplies made, purchases made and a comprehensive one.

Detailed invoice level returns are necessary for businesses to avail of credit for the taxes paid on various services and raw materials used in their operations. The deadlines for filing a provisional summary tax return for July, called GSTR 3 B and to remit taxes for that month are already over.

“GST implementation committee decides to extend date of GSTR 1, GSTR 2 and GSTR 3 for the month of July to 10 September, 25 September and 30 September 2017 respectively….Suitable notification to be issued shortly,” the official Twitter handle of the government answering queries on the indirect tax system said in two separate posts.

The original deadline for filing the three returns were 5 September, 10 September and 15 September, respectively.

The decision was taken by the GST implementation committee, which is authorized to decide on urgent matters that will subsequently be brought before the federal indirect tax body, the GST council chaired by finance minister Arun Jaitley.

The committee also decided to extend the deadline for filing the three returns for the month of August to 5 October, 10 October and 15 October, respectively, the government said in another tweet. The original deadlines were 20 September, 25 September and 30 September.

Experts welcomed the move. Pratik Jain, partner and leader of indirect tax practice at PwC India, said it was good to see the government showing flexibility in the compliance requirement, being cognizant of the ground realities.

“However, given the magnitude of data and issues in hand, extension of five days in filing of GSTR 1 for July may not be sufficient,” said Jain.

Jain said that allowing businesses to file GSTR 3B (summary return) till December 2017 and extending the timelines for other returns till such time will give industry and GSTN, the company that processes tax returns, time to sort out glitches in systems and processes. “Since tax would be collected on a monthly basis, revenue will not get impacted,” said Jain.

For the month of July, the government has collected Rs92,283 crore as GST receipts from 3.9 million tax payers, exceeding the target of Rs91,000 crore.